# Pipe-Smoking Apologetics: Lewis? Tolkien?



## dajones (May 29, 2009)

Okay, I've searched. No, really, I did. I just can't find it.

Am I making it up? Remembering badly? I swear I had read an essay, a Christian defense of tobacco smoking...Did CS Lewis or JRR Tolkien write such an essay? Anyone know what I'm talking about?


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## Contrabass Bry (May 3, 2010)

Don't know about an essay, but C.S. Lewis had a quote:

"I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand"


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## Mad Hatter (Apr 8, 2007)

No, I remember reading that too but it seems like it was written by a preacher. You might look at the Christian pipe smokers' forum


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## dajones (May 29, 2009)

Mad Hatter said:


> No, I remember reading that too but it seems like it was written by a preacher. You might look at the Christian pipe smokers' forum


Searched over there for a bit; was hoping to avoid the hassle of joining yet another board, but I may have to do that eventually.


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## dajones (May 29, 2009)

Contrabass Bry said:


> Don't know about an essay, but C.S. Lewis had a quote:
> 
> "I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand"


From his Introduction to _On the Incarnation_


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## Mad Hatter (Apr 8, 2007)

This might lead you to what you're looking for:

Theology and Pipe Smoking, Part III: Resources 

or

http://theophiliacs.com/2009/01/13/...f-sciences-and-the-noble-weed-in-three-parts/


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## dajones (May 29, 2009)

Mad Hatter said:


> This might lead you to what you're looking for:
> 
> Theology and Pipe Smoking, Part III: Resources


Thanks! Will check it out (blocked from my current station). In the meantime:
*
Bowled Over No Longer
The Once-Ubiquitous Aroma of Fatherhood Is Fading Away*
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 19, 2005

It smelled like cherry or chocolate or chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Or leaves burning in the back yard in those long-ago autumns when you were still allowed to burn leaves in the back yard.

In those days, pipe smoke was a man's signature scent. It was the incense in the Church of Dad, a burnt offering to the god of domesticated masculinity, a symbol of benevolent paternalism.

A passing whiff of your father's or grandfather's brand -- Erinmore Flake, say, or Royal Yacht Mixture -- can summon vivid memories even decades after his death. Smell is a key that unlocks the vault of memory, and the rich aroma of pipe smoke conjures up a lost world of armchairs and ashtrays, humidors and dark-wood racks holding pipes with WASPy names like Dunhill and Ferndown and Hardcastle.

It was a world of wise, contemplative men who sat and smoked and read serious, leather-bound literature, as well as a world of rugged outdoorsmen, canoeists and fly fishermen and clipper ship captains who puffed their pipes as they pored over nautical charts before sailing 'round the Horn.

It was a magical world, part reality and part myth, and now it has all but disappeared, fading like smoke.

"A lot of pipe smokers have died and new ones aren't coming along," says David Berkebile, owner of Georgetown Tobacco.

"The decline has been persistent and unrelenting," says Norman Sharp, head of the Pipe Tobacco Council.

Sharp rattles off the statistics: In 1970, Americans bought 52 million pounds of pipe tobacco. In 2004, they bought less than 5 million pounds. "That's a decline of 91 percent," he says.

In a 2003 survey, the Department of Health and Human Services calculated that there are 1.6 million pipe smokers in America. The same survey revealed that there are 14.6 million pot smokers and 600,000 crack smokers, which means that if an American is smoking something in a pipe these days, it's more likely to be dope than Dunhill's Mixture 965.

But the evidence of the pipe's decline goes beyond statistics. Fifty years ago, nearly every male movie star who wanted to be taken seriously posed for PR photos smoking a pipe and looking contemplative. These days, about the only pipe smokers found in the movies are the hobbits in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Pipe smoking is going the way of the shaving brush, the straight razor, the fedora, the Freemasons, the liberal Republican.

Bowled Over No Longer - washingtonpost.com

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## Contrabass Bry (May 3, 2010)

Insightful stuff in MadHatter's links and Dajones Washington Post article! 

Thanks much!


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## Mad Hatter (Apr 8, 2007)

*Theology and Pipe Smoking: Meditations on the Queen of Sciences and the Noble Weed, in Three Parts.*

*January 13, 2009*




Part I:Part IIPart IIIAppendix

​ C. S. Lewis

Back before fundamentalism caused much of American Christianity to go off the moral deep end and get caught in up in a fevered attempt to demonize a whole series of behaviors that are morally neutral, pipe smoking was seen as a very decent and proper thing for a theologian (& anyone else) to do. In many Christian communities which successfully fought off the tendency to condemn everything, pipe smoking has always and continues to be appreciated for the benefits it brings to moments of relaxation, conversation, and mental clarity.
In this post I will not attempt to systematize the benefits of pipe smoking. That has been done elsewhere (see below), nor will I systematically attempt to justify or defend the moderate use of tobacco against any who may criticize it either with (and wouldn't this be cute) a biblical argument, or a health argument. I will say at this juncture that most of the research done on the negative side affects of tobacco concern cigarettes and chewing tobacco. The handful of studies which have been done on pipes and cigars suggest that moderate use (defined in one study as 10 bowls a day) increases your chance of lung cancer less than 3% (mouth cancer may be a different story, however).
Nonetheless, the primary purposes of these posts are: a) to examine the intersection between that nearly mystical ritual of lighting a bowl of good tobacco, and practicing (in my case practicing amateurly) the discipline of Christian theology; and, b) to provide the gentle reader with a few resources which may help to integrate theology and pipe smoking.
The present post will include, besides this introduction, a brief, inconclusive, and hardly researched historical sketch of Christianity's relationship with pipe smoking (and smoking in general to some degree), and also modest list of (relatively) famous Christian pipe smokers. My second post will attempt to "pair" pipes and especially tobacco blends to the contemplation of certain theological ideas, and the reading of certain theological books, together with some other tobacco infused theological shenanigans. And my final post will list resources, both on-line and off, for the pipe smoking follower of Jesus.
It needs to be said that these posts owe much to the seminal work on the subject: Toward a Theology of Pipe Smoking by Arthur D. Yunker (see my upcoming third post [or just google it]), and I personally owe much to the man who introduced me to the quaint, curious and comforting world of pipes-a man who has travelled and is travelling that familiar path from idealistic young fundamentalist, to disgruntled bible college student, to rebellious pipe-smoker, to well-adjusted and moderate pipe-smoker, to well-adjusted and sincere Christian that many of us recognize as our own spiritual journey.


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## Mad Hatter (Apr 8, 2007)

Everything is relative. I live in a small town and a lot of things that are no-nos elsewhere don't get noticed here (ie- I've burned enough downed limbs and tree-trimmings in the last few years to fill more than a dump trailer). I'm lucky because I live in a neighborhood that is a mix of young not-so well-to-dos and older comfortably retired folks. Down the street is the public housing for the disabled, not the deadbeats, but the working-class disabled, mostly of course from not-so well-to-do backgrounds, carpenters, mechanics, etc. Life is pretty good here because the people all really have a live and let live attitude. They look at the positives and ignore the negatives.
On the other hand we have one busy-body and two troublemakers, but around here they're not flocking with their own kind so they keep pretty quiet. Other parts of town aren't so lucky. Hell I grew up in a town where if you had the audacity to drink a beer in your front yard you would be shunned, talked about and bad-mouthed, and even though they might have been a minority their attitudes still have an effect. Around here it can largely be associated with certain churches; other places its associated with political views.
My point: nothing much at all. Busy-bodies and troublemakers defy stereotype. They're as diverse as the kinds of people who like peanuts or bread or watermelon.
I'm not too sure pipe smoking will ever die but certain wheels set in motion will make it popular again, but the real question is: is that what we really want?


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## IHT (Dec 27, 2003)

dajones said:


> Thanks! Will check it out (blocked from my current station). In the meantime:
> *
> Bowled Over No Longer
> The Once-Ubiquitous Aroma of Fatherhood Is Fading Away*
> ...


i wrote that guy a few years ago, he emailed me back... i posted about it back then.


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## Mr.Lordi (May 20, 2007)

Only thing I ever saw regarding theology and smoking was someone had a quote from a preacher who was a cigar smoker, damn if I can remember the quote, though. :/



Speaking as a Reverend, ordained in the ULC, I fully endorse pipe smoking. p

Now, can I get an AMEN? :amen:


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## cactusboy33 (Sep 25, 2009)

I'm not much of religious man but I do remember a few things, if vaguely, like the apocryphal story of Saint Pius X, who once offered a cigar to a priest, and was refused, the priest claiming that he “has no such vices”, to which the sainted pope replied, “If it were a vice, I would not have offered it to you!”.

Or St Benedict jumped in a briar bush when he was tempted by sins of the flesh as well as Blessed Father Damien of Molokai who smoked a pipe to mask the smell of the leprosy.

Most of that I picked up whilst looking into pipe smoking when I was starting out.But that is the limit of my knowledge and a tad off topic.


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## RHNewfie (Mar 21, 2007)

Speaking as a seminary student I endorse it, and cigars too! My colleagues my disagree with me but Spurgeon is on my side!!!


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## chu2 (Jun 8, 2009)

Theology of Pipesmoking

Enjoy.


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## MarkC (Jul 4, 2009)

dajones said:


> _Sharp rattles off the statistics: In 1970, Americans bought 52 million pounds of pipe tobacco. In 2004, they bought less than 5 million pounds. "That's a decline of 91 percent," he says._


Holy crap! And believe me, when I started smoking a pipe the first time in '74, you hardly ever saw someone smoking a pipe. At least with tobacco. No wonder I get such weird looks now!


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## Jack Straw (Nov 20, 2008)

MarkC said:


> Holy crap! And believe me, when I started smoking a pipe the first time in '74, you hardly ever saw someone smoking a pipe. At least with tobacco. No wonder I get such weird looks now!


I saw a guy smoking a pipe the other day walking down the street. He actually was puffing a neat little volcano shaped pipe. I smiled, he smiled back, and when he saw that I was noticing his pipe (and approving), he said "It's not _the green._"


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